Here are some oldies, but goodies that I recommend you read: Two Partitioning Peculiarities and Aggregates and Partitioning Most of us know that partitions are one of the best ways to scale very large databases or very large IO workloads. However, there Read More...

When it comes to troubleshooting in relational databases, there's no better place to start than wait statistics. In a nutshell, a wait statistic is an internal counter that tells you how long the database spent waiting for a particular resource, activity, or process. Since wait statistics are categorized by type, one look will quickly tell the variety of problem that needs your attention, assuming you know meaning for Microsoft's lingo for each wait type. Read More...

Louisville has a special place in my heart because it was my brother's home for more than 15 years. I spent a lot of time on I-65 traveling from my home town of Huntsville, AL to visit my bro in Louisville and New Albany, after he bought a place on the Read More...

Back when my day-to-day duties included database administration work and enterprise architecture, I became rather obsessed with the idea of operational excellence . I read everything I could on the topic. I made a list of favorites, which became somewhat Read More...

I’d like your opinion here. Follow my logic here for a moment as I walk through a couple rhetorical questions. Have you ever had a friend developed an application entirely on SQL Server Developer Edition? (Not that YOU would ever do such a thing, but Read More...

I always enjoy spending time with my friends from Atlanta, as well as meeting folks and making new friends. If you live in the Atlanta area, I hope you'll join me on the evening of Wednesday, February 9th, 2011. Details are at the Atlanta SQL Server user Read More...

Back in late May, my pal Buck Woody ( blog | twitter ) and I presented SQL Server for the Oracle DBA . Buck played Jerry Lewis' role, while I played the straight man a la Dean Martin. You can see the recording and slide deck here . Since both Buck and Read More...